Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nineteenth-Century America

A surprising history of human hair in nineteenth-century America, where length, texture, color, and coiffure became powerful indicators of race, gender, and national belonging.

Hair is always and everywhere freighted with meaning. In nineteenth-century America, however, hair took on new significance as the young nation wrestled with its identity. During the colonial period, hair was usually seen as bodily discharge, even “excrement.” But as Sarah Gold McBride shows, hair gradually came to be...